The Sorority House Director
COVID on Campus: Terri Hoalcraft
I had my own cleaning business for 19 years and one of my clients was a lady named Judy. She was on the board at Gamma Phi Beta at Syracuse University and I swear it was set up because I was only cleaning for her for a couple of years when she told me there was this position open in the sorority house. So obviously, out of curiosity, I had to go check it out because I had never been inside a Greek house before. My mind was blown because I had a preconceived notion that it was going similar to Animal House, but thatâs not what it is like at all.
I will have been working as the facility director for five years this January, but right now it doesnât feel like a Greek organization because of the pandemic. You used to always be able to hear people giggling and screaming and playing music and interacting with each other and being social with each other. But now, if it werenât for the fact that I heard a shower running, I wouldnât know there was anyone else other than me in that house. A couple of weeks ago I heard someone playing music a couple of weeks ago and I ran and knocked on their door and said âcan you turn it up?â because thatâs whatâs missing. Now I just put on my AirPods so I can hear something because the silence is deafening.
Most of the girls spend all of their time in their rooms so I never see them. When they go downstairs to eat lunch Iâm upstairs making sure everything is clean so that I donât disturb their online classes. Itâs almost like dealing with ghosts to a point. It just breaks my heart. I pride myself on being available for whatever the girls need and I want to be a place to go if they need someone to talk to. Theyâre a long way from home and are going through a lot of stuff on campus, whether itâs you broke up with a love interest or you flunked a test and you want to cry and your momâs not there. Iâll give you a hug — just pretend that itâs your mom. But I canât do that now. I havenât been able to give any sense of comfort to these girls all semester long. That makes me feel like a failure, but thereâs nothing I can do. I canât tell them theyâre not going to get COVID, I canât tell them what weâre having for dinner tomorrow night because I donât know yet. Theyâre supposed to all come together as one and right now itâs survival of the fittest.
When parents were moving the girls in they were asking me âWhat have you done?â and making me assure them that I was going to keep their daughters safe. It was almost like an aggressive itâs all on me kind of thing. My reply was everything has been provided, the research has been done, if they follow the protocol weâve put in place everyone should be as good as we can hope. We put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into doing the proper research before we even let one girl step foot in that house. But look, getting COVID, not getting COVID … You have a 50/50 shot.
When I found out there was a positive case in the house and that we were shutting the house down I felt pure panic. And it wasnât for me, it was for the girls. What are these girls going to do without us here, how are we going to reassure them that theyâre okay, that theyâre going to have what they need? That someoneâs going to be there to listen to them? So I sent all of the girls my phone number and yeah, my phone rang. Everyone knew the reality was at some point in time, either the campus or individual homes, were going to shut down because if you get one case youâre done. But the blame thatâs placed on Greek life is wrong. It wasnât my girls having parties off-campus. It wasnât my girls having guests in the house when there was a no-guest policy. Everyone wants to blame everybody else. But what about those people who you students come in contact with that refuse to wear a mask or have a mask cover their mouth? Those are the people who are wrong and who are spreading COVID from outside of the SU community.
When I used to have a bad day my mom would make me peanut butter and Fluff sandwiches. So I once made the same for the girls and it practically set them all on fire they were so excited. Now it breaks my heart having to drop off food outside of the house. We love these girls. We take care of these girls. We want them to be successful. We create our own family unit and right now our family is broken and again thereâs nothing I can do. And as a mom, that rips my heart out.
This as-told-to interview is part of COVID on Campus, a series created by students in the Reporting classes at the Newhouse School in Fall 2020. COVID on Campus documents the experiences of students, staff, and faculty living through this extraordinary time.
